BBC and another error of judgment

When the Controller of BBC 1, Jay Hunt (salary £280,000), was accused of a conflict of interest this week, the first person to rush to her defence was her boss, BBC 'Director of Vision' Jana Bennett (salary £406,000).

She argued forcefully that it was perfectly proper for Miss Hunt to be company secretary of her husband's firm which earned thousands training BBC presenters.

At the time, it looked like a disinterested if utterly misguided attempt to support a colleague.

Jay Hunt, left, BBC 1 controller and Jana Bennett, director of vision at the BBC, have both been accused of conflicts of interest

But now it turns out that Miss Bennett is in a very similar position, as her husband is a director of a company that has made £2million from the BBC.

It was a striking error of judgment for a senior BBC executive not to have mentioned her own clear conflict of interest.

And these two examples are not isolated incidents. At least £1.2million a year is paid by the BBC to companies controlled by the relatives of its senior executives.

For a publicly-funded corporation this kind of behaviour - and its apparent concealment - is deeply troubling.

The supine BBC Board of Trustees must set up an immediate inquiry, bring all these cases out into the open, and consider carefully whether Miss Hunt and Miss Bennett can be trusted to continue in such prominent roles.

Save money and lives

Poor defence procurement isn't just a terrible waste of money - it kills.

That's the message of the 192 British soldiers lost so far in Afghanistan, and the 179 who died in Iraq.

There isn't the slightest doubt that these numbers would have been lower had our Government sent them into battle with proper equipment.

So the Government's decision to hush up an apparently critical report into military procurement is disgraceful.

In Iraq, lives were lost because soldiers lacked basic body armour. In Afghanistan, Britain's chronic shortage of helicopters has led to many avoidable casualties.

This isn't, however, purely a question of money. The Ministry of Defence spends a great deal of our cash - £36billion last year - but spends it very badly.

The report is understood to say that the habit of ordering equipment that we can't afford and then delaying its delivery is wasting £2.5billion a year.

How many desperately-needed Chinooks could we have got for that?

The report must be published now, so we can get to grips as soon as possible with the quagmire of defence procurement, one of those rare areas where with a bit more judgment politicians could save both lives and money at the same time.

The last post?

Over the next few days, the short-sighted Left-wingers who run the Communication Workers Union will bring 25,000 of their members out on strike, complaining about local plans for cost cutting.

They appear unable to appreciate that every such strike drives more customers away from the already beleaguered Royal Mail into the hands of foreign-owned competitors, putting at risk the very jobs they claim to want to protect.

But it is hard to feel sorry for the management, who have steadily run down the service they offer to customers, closing post offices across Britain and abolishing the second daily postal delivery.

Just as culpable are ministers, who spent years talking about the need for privatisation, only to duck the decision because they lack the guts to see it through.

In a year or two's time, when our letters are being delivered by Deutsche Post, the fact that we will know who to blame won't be much consolation.